


Clemency, Massachusetts

by Anefi



Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [16]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Ambiguous Relationships, Bullying, Found Family, Humor, M/M, Queerplatonic Relationships, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28723359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anefi/pseuds/Anefi
Summary: Getting kicked out of his frat halfway through the school year meant Fulcrum’s life was basically over. Also, he had nowhere to stay for Spring semester. “There’s an open room in my house, you should totally come live with me,” Misfire said, deep into a late night of cartoony video game violence.“Oh, yeah, that would be awesome,” Fulcrum replied, with absolutely no intention of taking him up on it. He and Misfire weren’t friends. They didn’t even really know each other outside of Shoot Shoot Bang Bang; they just happened to go to college in the same New England town.It wasn’t his first mistake. He could only hope it wouldn’t be his last. The house was adump.
Relationships: Fulcrum/Misfire (Transformers), Krok/Spinister (Transformers)
Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918825
Comments: 45
Kudos: 46





	1. The Dregs of Craigslist

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird little college-ish humanformers au that is absurdly dear to my heart. Short pieces from the same town are collected [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27695414), and they may make more sense with this context, or it may make more sense with them. Krok and Spinister's relationship can be read as romantic or QPR, and the same is true for Misfire and Grimlock.
> 
> Oh! And there's [a soundtrack!](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcUN6gSUqtqcLhGwnk4ICnZhOV0tBk9oo)
> 
> THANK YOU FOR READING

Fulcrum stood on the crumbling sidewalk, in the icy rain—because of course it was raining—and peered up at the crooked house. Torn plastic sheets billowed from the upper story windows. A six-foot hole facing the street had been hastily patched and boarded over. He would’ve assumed the whole building was condemned and abandoned if it weren’t for a dim glow in the lower windows. Cold rainwater crept down the back of his peacoat, seeped through his scarf, and trickled down his glasses, smearing the sparsely lit streetlights and already dubiously straight lines of the house into lurching waves.

According to the directions, he was supposed to knock.

The house was piled onto a street so steeply tilted that there were two ground-level entrances on what appeared to be different floors. He eyed the rickety wooden porch over the door on the downhill side with healthy suspicion, hitched his satchel higher up his shoulder, and went for the other. A doorbell hung from the wall on one loose wire under a sign that said “DoOrbell brokin uze hand.” Surrendering fully to the dark cloud of fatalism, he knocked.

After a few minutes of no response, he knocked again, harder. The insistent drumming of the rain blocked out any sounds of movement from inside. Unless no one was home. Or he had the wrong house. He’d checked the address no less than seven times, but – he glanced around with faint, rising hope – maybe he had the wrong house? The next building over had a fire escape that was still actually attached to the top story. Fulcrum was just starting to turn away when the door he was in front of swung open, a voice exclaimed, “Oh good, you made it,” and he was yanked inside.

Between the instant fog on his glasses and the dim lighting inside, his rescuer-slash-attacker was just a virulent magenta blob. Fulcrum stumbled on a dip in the floor, ricocheted off a solid wall of cardboard boxes lining the entryway, dropped his duffle bag, tripped over it, and landed in a soggy heap in an open room.

“Fulcrum’s here, everybody!” yelled the magenta blob.

There was a brief silence before someone else spoke up. “I think he’s dead.”

“That’s a record,” came from the other side of the room.

“I’m okay,” Fulcrum said, slightly muffled by the floor. He sat up, wiped off his glasses on his pants where his coat had kept him slightly less wet, and looked around to meet the people he was stuck with until something better came up.

A guy with a broad nose and fuzzy black hair was squinting at him upside down, leaning backwards over the top of a sagging paisley sectional. “I always forget there’s a door over there,” he said. He sat up, dismissing Fulcrum entirely.

“That’s Spinister.” The magenta blob resolved into ratty sweatshirt on a guy with pretty eyes and messy hair and a crooked, toothy smile. Fulcrum stared up at him like a helpless baby seal faced with a great white shark. “Here, let me help you up.” He was holding out his hand, and Fulcrum had already started to reach up, so it was too late to snatch it back, pick up his bags, and run out the door. “That’s Krok next to him on the couch—” the back of a hand appeared briefly for a half-hearted wave, “—and Crankcase in the kitchen.”

“Hey.”

Fulcrum could not have even pointed toward the kitchen. The hand in his was very warm, with long fingers and ragged nails. “And you’re—”

“Misfire! Obviously. You recognized me from my Twitch channel, right?”

He might’ve… said he would check that out. He definitely _should_ have. Then he could have avoided this whole situation. “I—”

“I’m actually streaming right now, so I gotta run. I’m super hyped you’re moving in with us, though! It’s gonna be great!”

He grinned, bright as a sunlamp, and Fulcrum’s left knee twinged like it was thinking of dropping him back to the floor. With one final squeeze of their hands Misfire was gone, thundering up a set of dilapidated stairs in the entryway that Fulcrum hadn’t noticed before. “Great,” Fulcrum repeated weakly.

“Hoo, boy,” said someone on the couch.

“This is going to be a disaster.”

“Not it.” That was Spinister, so the one next to him must be Krok.

When Krok stood and came around the couch, he was just a little taller than Fulcrum, but broad-shouldered in a tan plaid shirt, sandy-haired, and unimpressed. He sourly looked Fulcrum up and down, from his bedraggled helmet of hair to the puddle he was dripping onto the floor. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “You’re up in Flywheels’ old room.”

“What happened to him, again?” Spinister asked.

“Gone to a better place,” the third one – Crankcase – answered. Fulcrum looked up sharply. The kitchen turned out to be a row of wooden cabinets along the wall across the room from the couch. The refrigerator door slammed shut, revealing a stumpy guy with a mean smirk.

“He—”

“He graduated in December,” Krok said.

“Moved to California,” Crankcase added.

“Oh. That’s—great. For him. Great,” Fulcrum said. It was, at the very least, evidence that the house was survivable. Escapable. Fulcrum swiped fruitlessly at the damp hair plastered to his forehead.

“Great for you too, since it means his room is available,” Krok noted.

Fulcrum couldn’t force himself to agree, so he silently picked up his duffle and followed Krok up the stairs, past one landing with a short hall, three doors, and the rising babble of Misfire’s voice, up to the top floor, where the roof started sloping in. Two doors faced each other; Krok jerked a thumb at one and said, “That’s Nickel’s room. You’ll meet her later. Grimlock will probably be around too.” He pointed toward the end of the hall. “Bathroom. Keep it clean, or Nickel will skin you.” He showed Fulcrum into the last room—the room with the plastic sheeting where the windows should be. Of _course_ it was. “This is you.”

The plastic cracked in the wind. Rain drummed against the roof, directly above the weak, yellow overhead light. He looked around the small, frigid, dusty room, and something of how he felt must have showed on his face, because Krok seemed to soften a little bit.

Krok clapped him on the shoulder. “Be down for dinner in an hour,” he said. “Wednesday is wing night.” He turned around and left Fulcrum to contemplate his bleak, damp future.


	2. Wing Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fulcrum Suffers. First dinner in the new house!

Cautious exploration turned up a broom, a roll of paper towels, and some extra lightbulbs in a shallow closet in the bathroom. Fulcrum had hardly anything to unpack, only partially in the expectation that he would be moving again before too long, so there was enough space on the desk and lumpy mattress to spread most of his clothes out to dry, once he’d wiped down all the surfaces two or three times. His laptop still booted up, which was the most important thing. With the miniature stapler in his school supplies, he even managed to secure the plastic over the windows so it wasn’t letting more water in, though it still shook like thunder when the wind blew.

The door of his room banged open against the wall. As he startled, Fulcrum felt the teetering chair he’d climbed onto slip out from underneath his feet. For a brief, suspended second, his arms windmilling wildly, he thought he might save it. Then Misfire – because _of course_ it was Misfire – leaped forward from the doorway, presumably to help, but Fulcrum’s swinging fist lashed out and caught him in the face, and both of them and the chair went crashing down. Fulcrum ended up on the floor again, this time staring up at the pathetically swaying light fixture – now much brighter, with two new bulbs – and Misfire frowning down at him, brown curls flopping around the sharp angles of his face.

“Wow, Fulcrum, you should really be more careful,” he said, which was probably the first time in Fulcrum’s life that those words had ever been said to him in that order.

Indignation spurred him to recovery. “Hey! Haven’t you ever heard of _knocking?_ ”

“Um. Yes?” Misfire seemed confused. Maybe Fulcrum had hit him harder than he thought.

“I mean that _you_ should knock. If you want to come into _my room_. Please.”

“Sure,” Misfire said. Definitely just humoring him.

“I mean it! What if I had been—” he found that he couldn’t quite say the word _naked_.

A slow, curling smile crept over Misfire’s face. “Oh,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind _that_.”

Fulcrum decided that he had hit his own head harder than he’d thought, or possibly, not hard enough. He was often thankful that his own skin was dark enough that it wasn’t obvious when he blushed. However, he still felt the prickling heat, and sometimes it seemed like anyone standing close enough should be able to feel the radiant particles of raw embarrassment emanating from him. The floor was made of wood. He might, conceivably, blush hard enough to burn his way through the planks beneath him, fall all the way to the basement, and then bury himself there forever. 

He put both hands over his face and quietly screamed.

Fulcrum wasn’t sure he ever would have stood up, if Krok’s yell for dinner hadn’t come echoing up the stairwell. Putting his hands over his face had certainly been a tactical error, because he was completely unprepared when Misfire’s fingers circled his wrist and cautiously tugged.

It was pure reflex that made him smack Misfire’s hand away. He didn’t feel bad about the pout he got in return, either. He stood up, and went downstairs, and if Misfire trailed him into the main room cradling his hand like Fulcrum should be sorry, he wasn’t going to acknowledge it.

One wall of the open ground floor had been converted to a kitchen at some point unfortunately after the popularization of fiberboard. The line of cabinets and appliances was separated from the paisley sectional and the rest of the room by a blocky wooden table that must have been original to the house or built where it sat; it wasn’t sized to fit through any of the doors, and gave the distinct impression that it would outlast all of them, and maybe the rest of the neighborhood too. Hunched over the table, Crankcase was scribbling on some printer paper, his hooked nose smeared with ink, as Spinister gently but insistently nudged his writing arm across the table with a plate. Five other places were set, with a gallon jug of hot sauce in the middle like a centerpiece.

Krok stood before the oven in a gingham apron, hands braced on his hips in green oven mitts styled like alligators. “Get your drinks and sit,” he said without turning around. Fulcrum risked a glance at Misfire for clues.

“There’s probably some juice? I have Mountain Dew upstairs,” he offered, a little warily.

“Stop drinking my juice,” Crankcase said. Spinister had almost succeeded in pushing his hand off the edge of the table.

“Water’s fine,” Fulcrum said hastily. “Please.”

“You shouldn’t drink the water here unfiltered,” Krok said. “Milk? The milk comes out of the shared grocery budget.” Misfire was already busy pouring orange juice into two glasses, red ones, with diamond texturing; Fulcrum could only hope that Crankcase wouldn’t be able to tell.

Two trays of baked chicken pieces came out of the oven sizzling, and everybody was suddenly scrambling for chairs as Krok set them carefully on slightly charred potholders on the table. Misfire snaked a hand around his elbow to grab a piece, hissed as he dropped it on his plate, and stuck his fingers in his mouth ruefully. Krok shook his head.

Crankcase tidied up his stray papers, tapping them into a pile against the varnished wood. It was the only sound for a few long seconds as the others avidly watched the cooling trays.

“So,” Fulcrum ventured. “You guys do this every week?”

“Only on wing nights,” Spinister said, which provided precisely no additional information, but Fulcrum wasn’t going to ask again. At Krok’s nod, everybody reached in at once. A quick glance around revealed no forks, or cutlery of any kind, though there was a square of paper towel folded neatly under his plate, so after the first rush, Fulcrum, too, just—went for it. He poured some hot sauce on his plate as it was passed around. Then they were all eating, crowded together, bumping elbows, and Misfire laughed at something Crankcase said, and it was suddenly, shockingly domestic. Nothing like the frat, where the kitchen was a field of land mines, or the stifling silence of home.

Krok pointed at him with a drumstick. “You didn’t pay in, so why don’t you do the dishes,” he said. Fulcrum understood that it wasn’t a suggestion, and also, that offering ten dollars to get out of it would be an incorrect move.

“Hey, why don’t I do the dishes,” Fulcrum said.

After dinner, Spinister and Krok settled on the couch and pulled out a box of tiny bottles of paint, which they started applying in tiny strokes with tiny brushes to neat ranks of tiny toy soldiers, lining them up on the coffee table to dry. The complete lack of reaction from Crankcase and Misfire seemed to indicate that this was a common event, or at least not the most incongruous, inexplicable thing they’d ever seen; they piled onto the other branch of the sectional and were careful not to kick the table. The couch faced a blank wall, which hadn’t previously been remarkable, but a tan box bolted to the ceiling turned out to be a three-color projector, which turned the whole stretch into a slightly unfocused screen. With minimal discussion, a show started up about—fishing? After he finished washing up, Fulcrum joined them on the – on closer encounter somewhat pungent – couch, on the outside, next to Crankcase, fighting the sagging slope by leaning away, but trying to be subtle about it. The colors of the projector didn’t quite line up right, limning the figures on screen in fuzzy red and blue and green, but as he kept watching the weird edges bothered him less and less. Eventually, he stopped noticing at all.

There weren’t any spare sheets upstairs that he could find, so that night Fulcrum curled up and shivered between a towel and his coat and fell asleep to the pattering sound of the rain.

He’d had worse nights. He'd had worse housemates. There was still no way he was staying.


	3. Bottom Shelf Books

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a long one!

He was woken up in the morning by the high whine of a bus’s hydraulics from the bottom of the hill, accompanied by a gust of frigid air through the plastic over the windows. Once Fulcrum was bundled up in all his warmest clothes with his breath fogging the air, he figured there wasn’t a good reason left _not_ to go outside, so he stumbled out into the scoured-clean morning. The house was quiet, besides some soft creaking, like an old tree in the wind. The regiment of soldiers on the coffee table had acquired a new layer of polished black on their boots, and Crankcase’s papers had reclaimed a corner of the kitchen table. A key was left out for him, on a sheet with his name in blocky letters, the other side covered with scribbles of some kind of math. He’d taken it and slipped out.

The derelict house wasn’t any more promising in the sharp daylight than it had been the night before. It hunkered at the top a steep cobble dead end. While the paint may have once been blue, it was faded to an ugly greyish mauve where it hadn’t peeled off the siding in curling strips and dropped into sad piles along the foundation. A sharp swell of wind impelled Fulcrum up the street and up a crumbling staircase cut into the hill that led to High street, where some condos had a better view over the steepled roofs toward downtown, and he tucked his hands into his pockets and his chin into his scarf. As he passed it, he recognized a park he’d thrown up in freshman year, after a night of—well, with the clarity of hindsight, he could identify it as hazing. He dropped his eyes back to the brick sidewalk with a queasy feeling in his stomach. He needed coffee.

On the main street near campus, shops were open but not busy. It would get worse, as more people woke up, and as more students came back for the Spring semester, but for now, the line at the coffee shop was quick. Fortified by a scone and a steaming macchiato, he set his phone on a wireframe table and scrolled unenthusiastically through his registered classes: Economics 102, Intro to Business Management, History of Ancient Greece. And one science course. Just to fill a requirement.

Fulcrum pushed past someone stapling new notifications to the bulletin board at the entrance to the campus bookstore and headed to the basement. Half an hour later, he staggered over to the checkout with his pile of required and recommended textbooks. A bored cashier set her book down to ring him up.

“Oh. Hmm,” he said when he saw the total. “One second. Sorry about this. I seem to have—Yeah, you know what? I forgot something. I’ll just—” he inched the stack closer to the edge of the counter, then hefted it in his arms again and shuffled away.

“Yellow stickers are half price,” the cashier said.

First, he put back all the books that were only recommended and not required. Then he reluctantly sank to his knees and started digging through the bottom shelves for used copies of the books he had left. One of the assigned books was a new edition, but the used copies of the previous version were only two years older. How much could Greek history have changed in two years?

A hard knock to his shoulder sent him sprawling. Books scattered across the floor. He kept his head down, just daring a furtive glance in time to catch a familiar letter jacket disappearing around the end of the aisle.

The cashier didn’t say anything when he meekly returned and stacked his smaller, shabbier pile beside the register. Upstairs, he bought a sheet set, a pillow, and a bulky duvet, which he carried awkwardly all the way back to the house, peering over the top of the bundle in his arms with his chin securing the pillow.

When he let himself in, the downstairs smelled like fresh-brewed coffee and Krok was there, wearing another tan plaid shirt, or maybe the same one.

“Fulcrum,” he said, as Fulcrum cautiously navigated the entryway with his precarious bundle. “I see you got your key.”

Fulcrum wasn’t sure why he felt like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. “Yes? I did? Thanks?”

Krok’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally.

“Um—”

“Do you drink coffee?”

Under the circumstances, it seemed safe to admit to. “I do?” Fulcrum consciously loosened the death grip on his new pillow.

The mug Krok was holding had something written on it; all Fulcrum could make out was MOM in Comic Sans. He very deliberately pulled his focus back to Krok’s face.

“If you want anything besides medium roast, you should buy it yourself. Otherwise it’s part of the house grocery budget, which we split, along with utilities.”

“Very organized,” Fulcrum noted.

“You’d think so,” Krok said, with existential weariness.

If there was any good answer to that, nervous laughter definitely wasn’t the best. “So, uh, Krok.” Krok shook his head a little and waved his mug to indicate he was listening. “I wanted to talk to you, actually. I was hoping to. I was wondering. The—windows upstairs? The plastic where the windows should be, I mean, you know—about that. Is there—is that going to be fixed? Anytime soon? It’s winter, so—It’s not ideal. Right?”

Krok sipped his coffee and waited for him to trail off. “I’ll send you the landlord’s number,” he said.

“Great, great. Okay. That’s great. Thanks.”

He fled upstairs.

Lining up his new (used) books on a built-in shelf took all of three minutes, making the bed was another five, and Fulcrum wasn’t going to step foot outside his door again unless the building was on fire or classes started, so it was time to focus on literally anything else. He opened his laptop, reminded himself to get the house wifi details from anyone but Krok later, and mooched off a nearby unsecured network, vV TC’S PARTY PALACE!!! Vv

The next few hours passed in a pleasant haze of Reddit, YouTube, a little bit of Minecraft, absently checking his email—

Immediately closing his email.

Opening a new browser tab.

Scouring the school website for a way to change his official email address.

When Misfire kicked open his door, Fulcrum’s face had been pressed to the desk long enough that there was a pattern of wood grain embossed on his cheek.

“Fulcrum! I wanted to ask—hey, what are you doing?”

“Dropping out,” Fulcrum mumbled.

Misfire drifted closer. “Really? I thought you were pretty serious about the school thing. I can show you how to run a Twitch stream if you’re looking for something else to do, but I gotta warn you, just because it’s working out great for me doesn’t mean that—oh, what’s this, astronomy?”

Too late, Fulcrum realized that Misfire had started nosing through his textbooks. “No!” he said, shooting up in his chair and swiping for it. “It’s—it’s nothing, I—”

“Stellar Cartography: Finding Our Place in the Universe,” Misfire read, easily dodging his grasp, casually holding the book higher than Fulcrum could reach.

Fulcrum gave up on snatching it and crossed his arms tight across his chest, prepared for teasing laughter, for—picking up another copy tomorrow, if he had to, and, and maybe putting a lock on his door. “I have a gen ed to fill, that’s—it was one of the last classes still open when I registered,” he lied.

“Whatever, nerd.” The book landed back on his desk. “Anyway, I came up here to ask if you were up for some S2B2.”

“Um.” The book was still sitting there. Fulcrum slowly looked up from it to find Misfire’s face right beside his, alarmingly focused, close enough to smell his candy-sweet breath. Misfire poked him in the shoulder when he flinched.

“There’s a new map! It’s a spaceship or something—and you like space stuff! See? It’s perfect. Spinister’s working and Krok’s out, but we got Crankcase and Grimmy, so you and me can team up and run around with scatter blasters.”

Fulcrum had never before been part of a real-life, in-person conversation about Shoot Shoot Bang Bang. In retrospect, it was something he should have anticipated. There was a persistent disconnect in his mind between the Misfire looming over him in a ragged magenta hoodie and the chat tag and character model in a flight suit he teamed up with sometimes to shoot other cartoony avatars online. “I’m on wireless,” he said, stalling. “My ping must be—”

When Misfire grinned, bright and open, it was really—strangely fascinating. Hard to look away from. Fulcrum felt himself tentatively starting to smile back for no reason. “We can fix that,” Misfire said, and grabbed his hand. Somehow neither of them broke an ankle as Fulcrum was dragged down a flight of stairs, past an open door to a room with a flash of a messy bed, a lava lamp, walls absolutely plastered with – were those stickers? – and music playing, fast and loud.

“Crankcase!” Misfire bounced off the next door down the hall as he tried to open it, and finally dropped Fulcrum’s hand to start drumming on it to the rhythm of the music. Or at least at the tempo. Almost.

“Go away!” Crankcase yelled from inside.

“We need stuff for Fulcrum!”

“I don’t want to know!”

“He’s da_b0mb.com!”

“I _said_ —” The door jerked open. “ _You’re_ da_b0mb?”

“Ha,” Fulcrum said. When he first made that account, he thought it would be funnier. “It’s, well, I—”

“He needs a hookup,” Misfire said smugly.

“An _internet_ hookup,” Fulcrum stressed. Actually, on consideration, that was worse.

Crankcase kind of squinted at him, then slowly turned his head toward Misfire so the stare became a side-eye. “You’re sure,” he asked.

Fulcrum was starting to doubt it himself.

“It’s why I invited him to live here! I knew he’d fit right in,” Misfire affirmed, which might have actually been kind of insulting. “Don’t you guys listen to me at all?”

“I try not to,” Crankcase said. Fulcrum had an epiphany.

“Oh,” he said, “You’re grumpitron.”

The face Crankcase made at that made Misfire throw his head back and laugh like a hyena. Crankcase stomped off and returned with a cardboard box of miscellaneous electronics and a Gordian spaghetti ball of cable, which he shoved at Fulcrum, and a sour look for Misfire, who was still giggling. Once untangled, the cable ran from a router in Crankcase’s room up the wall, into the crown of white Christmas lights lining the upper molding, through a hole in the ceiling, along a support beam guided by an extending pole that Crankcase seemed to have just for this purpose, and then _outside_ through a hole in the _siding_ and up to Fulcrum’s room through the open window.

With almost morbid curiosity, Fulcrum asked, “Do you ever get bugs or anything through the hole in the wall?”

“Not that one,” Misfire said.

Crankcase took a screwdriver out from between his teeth long enough to add, “A squirrel, once.”

Misfire lit up. “Nutters! He was fun.”

Fulcrum laughed once, weakly, until he realized they weren’t joking. “Thanks for this,” he said, rather than asking for any more details he’d probably prefer not to know. “Is internet part of the house utilities budget? I should probably pay into that, right?”

“Oh, no, we’re mooching from TC,” Misfire said.

Crankcase pointed to another cable hooked into the router. “That runs next door. If it cuts out—well, we’ll show you what to do.”

“Ah.”

The cable worked, though, so in short order they got Fulcrum set up and invited him to the house Discord server – and Misfire dared to call _him_ a nerd – where he matched up some more handles with faces. cmdr k was obvious, now that he had met Krok, as was sp1nsandneedles. Sharptooth joined their games but stayed muted while Misfire and Crankcase talked over comms, and Kneecaps Wanted was idling.

The new map was pretty good. It had a spaceship theme, like Misfire said, but it was all busted up and charred like it’d lost a battle, flickering lights and ripped-out bulkheads and electronics sparking everywhere, The normal game modes were available, deathmatch, teams of two, or Battle Royale, but there was another one, something new: 6v6. “Hey, we should try that sometime,” Misfire said.

“Sounds lame,” Crankcase dismissed, and Fulcrum was secretly relieved.

Partnering up with Misfire was good, though. They got blown up immediately a few times, and sniped from across the map one round with a shot so improbable it had to be a glitch, but mostly, between the two of them, they did pretty well. Three rounds in, Crankcase got a lucky victory by figuring out how to activate the ship’s security drones, which nobody had realized was an option. Sharptooth was an absolute monster, a bruiser with a flamethrower and sword; the best strategy Fulcrum and Misfire could find with him on the server was running the other way, picking off Crankcase and other stragglers, and hoping he was hurt enough after killing everyone else that they could harry him down 2v1.

The final stage of the map was centered on the massive, open engine room, a cavern lined with precarious balconies around a wicked glowing power core of lightning-shot plasma. Fulcrum and Misfire crept around the main action through the air vents, but as the spaceship shook apart, the way they’d come was blocked. The only option left was out, directly into an entrenched enemy position. The strongest team still alive, to be precise, sniping at the others from high cover.

“We need a plan,” Fulcrum said. Waiting a few minutes for some more casualties seemed like probably the best idea. The two of them were lightly armed, and only Misfire had a little armor; if there was one good trap on the vent exit they were done for, let alone direct fire, if the defenders noticed them sneaking up.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a great plan,” Misfire said, sounding as serious as Fulcrum had ever heard him. “Here it is. Are you paying attention? I’m gonna run out there, and I need to you back me up.”

“What? That’s not a plan. Wait, Misfire, _wait_ —” but Misfire was already shooting off the vent cover and diving out onto the balcony. He tagged one enemy in the back, which just made him turn around. Then Misfire was jumping and weaving for his life, dodging close-range blasts and some potshots from a laser rifle across the room.

With a sudden, adrenalized clarity, Fulcrum realized the team on the balcony had turned completely away from the vent. His last sticky grenade armed with a beep that went unnoticed under the blaster fire. A short, perfect throw landed it directly between the two defenders. The explosion took them both under half health. Like avenging wraiths, Fulcrum and Misfire descended on them through the smoke.

While they killed those guys and took their stuff, Sharptooth was tagged out by the laser rifler—Archangel, shit, Fulcrum recognized that tag. The last team standing was two guys from [N7]. Fulcrum and Misfire could play it safe, take over the fortified position, and go head-to-head with their legendary sniper. Or.

“You want to—”

“ _Yeah_.”

He could hear Misfire’s vicious grin, mirror to his own. They fired heel thrusters in tandem to launch across the room, over the strobing core, blasting their way into the teeth of returning fire.

When the round ended, he looked up and the sun was down, the attic room was dark, and through the giddy, golden buzz of endorphins, Fulcrum realized he was starving. “Hey, you guys want to get some food?” he asked over Discord.

“Nah, I’ve got ramen,” Crankcase said. “Good games, I guess, even though you and Fulcrum just killed me sixteen times in a row after I helped you hook up his landline.”

“Yeah, we did. And it was awesome!” Misfire sang.

Fulcrum grinned down at his keyboard, fragile wings beating in his chest. “What about you, Misfire? You want to go get burritos or something?”

“Yeah, sure! Wait—I gotta find my shoes. Come down to my room when you’re ready to go. Hey—” he cut off, like he was turning away to talk to someone in his room; one of the other housemates was probably around.

Fulcrum was all but bouncing on his toes. He didn’t have much to do besides put on his coat, tuck in the ends of his warmest scarf, and run a hand through his hair, so he dashed down the stairs to Misfire’s room almost right away. The door was open, still – maybe it always was, Misfire’s ebullience spilling out, welcoming anyone in – so he didn’t let himself overthink it, and swung around the doorframe.

Which meant he collided face-first with a very big, very solid chest in a puffy black jacket that smelled like smoke. “Sorry!” he squeaked, as he rebounded off—and looked up, and up, and up.

An inscrutable titan frowned down at him with severe eyebrows and an aura of judgement, and all of Fulcrum’s euphoria evaporated like acetone, leaving a numb chill. He wondered if the school would refund his tuition if he ended up in the hospital. “ _Really_ sorry,” he emphasized. “I was just—I thought this was—”

Another door opened at the back of the room, and Misfire spilled out, whooping. “Time for food! Burritos for winners! Yeah!” Fulcrum didn’t bother correcting him; he’d felt like a winner just a short while ago, even after coming in second.

The black wall between them didn’t move until Misfire tackled him – to no effect – and grabbed onto an arm, which the stranger accommodated without a flicker in his expression.

Fulcrum stepped back. “I, um. I didn’t know anyone else was here,” he said weakly.

Misfire beamed at him. “Oh, yeah, you guys haven’t met! Grimlock, Fulcrum. Fulcrum, Grimlock, aka Sharptooth.”

“Hi. Uh, good games,” Fulcrum said, jerking his hand in an awkward wave. “You’re—you were very scary.”

Grimlock studied him silently. He nodded, once. Fulcrum’s smile felt weak. 

Misfire tugged on the arm he was latched onto. “Let’s get out of here! Did you knock on Krok’s door?”

Fulcrum counted the doors in the hall: Misfire and Crankcase’s rooms he knew, and there were two more. “Which one’s his?”

Misfire pointed to the one nearest the stairs. “Here; the other one’s Spinister’s.”

Which meant there wasn’t another room suddenly appearing that would belong to Grimlock. Which meant—he lived in Misfire’s room? Or—stayed with him? Came over to play video games?

Fulcrum knocked on Krok’s door rather than think any more about that. It was barely any of his business. Good to know, sure. For general information. About who might live in the house he’d just moved into. In case of a fire, or something. Future criminal investigations. “Hey, Krok,” he said when the door opened. Behind him, a desk was stacked high with papers and books, and surrounded by piles of the same. “We’re going to get some food—me, Misfire, and Grimlock. The three of us. Do you want to come too?”

Krok’s eyes rose to acknowledge the other two. “I’m going to wait for Spinister to get home,” he said. “Have fun.”

“Thanks,” Fulcrum said glumly.

Outside the sky was dark and overcast, low clouds simmering with the reflected yellow glow of the city. The sidewalks in their neighborhood were uneven brick, pushed up and cracked open by the roots of gnarled old trees and creeping vines. Grimlock took up most of the sidewalk by himself, so Fulcrum trailed behind him and Misfire and tried not to trip, glancing furtively into warmly lit windows as they passed. The others seemed to know where they were going.

“So. Krok and Spinister,” Fulcrum said. “Are they—they seem pretty close.”

Misfire turned around to look at him and immediately caught his heel on a jutting brick while walking backwards, but his arm shot out to latch onto Grimlock’s and he managed to stay upright. Grimlock didn’t even waver. “They’ve been roomies basically forever,” Misfire said, unperturbed. “Like, since they were in high school. Ages ago. Eons. Geologic eras.”

“It must be nice. To have someone who knows you like that, who sticks with you, who you can share your whole life with.” Misfire gave him kind of a weird look; Fulcrum concentrated on where he was walking.

“Yeah, I guess,” Misfire said. “Sometimes Krok talks about their other old friends, but I’ve never met any of them.”

Even Krok had friends. Fulcrum couldn’t manage to keep in touch with the people from his freshman dorm or intro classes last year—and the less said about the frat, the better. Not for the first time, he wondered if there was just something wrong with him, something broken, and if everyone else could somehow tell. “I’m pretty sure Krok hates me,” he said.

Misfire made a sympathetic noise. “Aw, no, that’s just his face.”

Fulcrum looked up hopefully. “Yeah?”

Misfire grimaced and made a see-sawing motion with a free hand. “Probably.” He almost tripped again. He turned around while Grimlock’s shoulders shook with what might have been a laugh; Fulcrum wasn’t encouraged.

A few zig-zagged blocks later, a neon sign in the shape of a taco stuck out of a brick building above a staircase down. Misfire flashed a grin over his shoulder as Grimlock opened the door. “This place is the best,” he said.

In stark contrast to the overcast, chilly quiet of the street, the inside of the taco cellar was bright, loud, and crowded. A humid cloud billowed from the kitchen station by the bottom of the stairs, where pots so big they were basically cauldrons boiled away mysteriously on hissing burners. The rest of the place was just as narrow as the sidewalk outside, so people had to squeeze by the assembly-line ordering station to get to the door or to the sticky seats in the back. TV monitors showing three different soccer matches lined one wall, opposite cramped boards displaying the menu.

“It smells good,” Fulcrum said, leaning in with interest despite himself.

“What?” Misfire yelled; Fulcrum waved him off.

Grimlock easily claimed one of the tables in the back, under a monitor showing guys chasing down and tying up little cows in a dirt arena. Fulcrum was very pleased to settle in with a burrito the size of his arm; Misfire had something that looked similar but deep-fried, plus a few glass bottles that glowed the same colors as the neon sign. Grimlock had a huge pile of nachos with a hamburger and fries on the side, which he steadily devoured in about the same time it took Misfire to inhale his fried thing. Fulcrum looked at their empty plates and covered the other half of his burrito with tin foil to take home.

The temperature had dropped outside, threatening frost, but he headed back toward the house with a renewed spring in his step. Belatedly, he realized that Misfire and Grimlock had turned the other way. “We’re going swing by Prosperity,” Misfire said when he caught up. “Tomorrow’s a big garbage day.” He seemed to consider it an explanation. Fulcrum didn’t know what differentiated a normal garbage day from a ‘big’ one, and he was a little afraid to ask.

The far side of Prosperity Street was lined with big, old houses, stone walls along the street and carriage paths for driveways, front doors set back from the road by lawns and gardens. City-issue color-coded garbage bins were paired neatly in front of each gate. “Thrilling,” Fulcrum said.

Misfire just hummed, darting around to check on either side of the bins as they walked by. Fulcrum looked at Grimlock, but, unsurprisingly, no help was forthcoming; his attention was focused further down the road, on a boisterous group walking in their direction, until the revelers turned off a few blocks away.

Suddenly, Misfire sprinted ahead. “Got one!” Around the next set of bins, there were three kitchy barstools, white and rattan; one had a broken leg. “Bust,” he said, with an air of honest disappointment.

Fulcrum swallowed his first response, and also the next few. “What are you trying to find,” he asked instead.

“Oh, you know,” Misfire said. Fulcrum really, really did not. “Furniture, kitchen stuff, dishes. Sometimes we find electronics, but usually that’s better around the colleges. The microwave! That was a good score. Brainstorm fixed it up.”

“Huh.” It explained the projector. And the strangely fussy glassware. Actually, it explained quite a bit.

“We found an aquarium, once,” Misfire went on.

“Oh, yeah? With fish and stuff? Do you still have it?”

Misfire winced. “A turtle. No. We had to set it loose in the canal. Don’t mention it around Krok, okay?”

He didn’t think there was ever a risk of that. “Sure,” he said.

A few houses down there was a rolled-up rug, and Misfire crouched on the ground, inspecting it with the flashlight of his phone. “You need a rug, don’t you, Fulcrum? I think this one’s blue.”

Fulcrum had a vague idea that it was rude not to accept gifts, but he was pretty sure this didn’t count. “Um.”

“Check for bedbugs.” Fulcrum did a double take at the sudden gravelly bass beside him; it was the first thing he’d heard Grimlock say.

“People this rich don’t get bedbugs,” Misfire scoffed. He leaned in closer anyway. “Nobody ever lets me forget the _one time_ I screwed up.”

“Two times,” Grimlock said.

“No, no! The chair just had lice.”

“Still bad.”

Fulcrum shuddered. “You know what? I never liked rugs. I really don’t need one. I’m good.”

“It’s no problem,” Misfire said brightly. “Grab that end, will you?”

It took all three of them to carry the rolled-up rug, and by the time they’d staggered the long blocks back to the house, Fulcrum’s arms were burning from friction scrapes and unaccustomed muscle use. Misfire picked up a boxy cobalt stereo-cassette player, too, scuffed and dated and heavy as ten bricks. “It’s crazy what people will just throw out,” he wheezed, after hauling it and the rug up their steep cobble hill, before tackling the stairs.

“Some people _are_ crazy,” Fulcrum flatly agreed.

They rolled out the new rug up in his room; Fulcrum had pretty much resigned himself to the inevitable after carrying it the first block. It turned out to be an abstract blue-green with lighter blue and tan accents, like a Magic Eye of a terrain map, not too ugly as long as you didn’t look directly at it. He was going to assume the stain in the corner was wine.

It wasn't like the rug really tied the room together, but when Fulcrum took his shoes off, it was less cold than the floor. He'd probably have to take it with him when he moved.


	4. Bargain Bin Classics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fulcrum narrowly survives _several_ conversations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> icymi: [a playlist](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcUN6gSUqtqcLhGwnk4ICnZhOV0tBk9oo)!

In the morning Fulcrum was again awoken by the labored wheezing of a bus, but at least he wasn’t shivering, despite the thin layer of frost on his new duvet. Krok had left him the number for the landlord on the discord server with the note “good luck,” so after considering the coffeemaker, leaving it alone, rummaging through the cabinets, surreptitiously taking a lone stale Pop-Tart from an open foil packet with a promise to himself to replace it, walking halfway across town to the grocery store, wandering through the aisles, weighing the impulsive desires of his stomach against the literal drag of his shopping basket, taking the bus back, realizing he forgot Pop-Tarts, pacing for twenty minutes, putting his coat on and taking it off twice, a little more pacing, and five minutes of sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, he was ready to make a phone call. 

It rang twice and picked up to silence. Fulcrum checked to make sure it was still connected and cautiously brought it back up to his ear. “Hel—”

“Whaddya want? I ain’t got all day,” a brash voice interrupted.

“Right. Sorry.” Wait, why was he apologizing? “Hi. My name’s Fulcrum. I just moved in with Krok and Spinister at—”

“Those losers? Sucks to be you. What am I supposed to do about it?”

If only he knew. “No, uh, I was told this was the number for the landlord? Of the house.”

“Ha! Sure.”

He was just going to assume that was a yes. “Okay, well, there’s a window missing upstairs, and I was—is there someone who could come and fix it?”

“Probably. You know, it’s been like that a while. The last guy didn’t mind.”

Eyeing the stapled, tattered plastic, Fulcrum found that hard to believe. “Well, I… do.”

“What, you think you’re too good for a little fresh air?”

Nothing in his extensive collection of practiced scripts for social situations seemed applicable for this. “Um—”

“Alright, alright, keep your pants on. Sheesh. Someone’ll be over.”

“Great! Great. Great.” Fulcrum was almost as relieved at the promise of getting his window fixed as he was at the prospect of ending the conversation. “Can you tell me—”

They hung up.

“—When,” he trailed off lamely.

Feeling reasonably accomplished for the day, he wandered downstairs to make lunch. Step one, was, of course, thoroughly scrubbing out the microwave. After ventilating a pack of curry and rice and puzzling out the controls, he was trying to watch from a safe distance while it cooked when a sound like a lawnmower failing to start came from the couch and he jumped about a foot in the air. There was a lull where everything was silent except for the pounding in his ears, and then it happened again. Silence. Then, a creak.

Fulcrum cautiously ventured close enough to peer over the back of the ugly couch. He found Spinister in a pink Hello Kitty shirt that seemed too small for him, bloodshot eyes blinking at the ceiling, hair flat on one side and fluffed up on the other, hand clamped around a little black plastic stick.

“Spinister! You—Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I didn’t see you there.”

Spinister slowly focused in his direction. “New guy,” he grumbled hoarsely; not really a greeting, more like a reminder to himself.

“Yeah, that’s me. Fulcrum.” The microwave beeped, _unnecessarily_ piercing, and he winced. “I’ll just let you—”

“What’s your blood type,” Spinister said, rubbing at his eyes with the back of hand.

Fulcrum froze. “What?”

“Blood. Type.” He gestured aimlessly. “Flavor.”

“ _Flavor?_ ”

He frowned. “Find out.”

Fulcrum said nothing. He didn’t twitch a muscle, some instinctual prey instinct taking over to keep him perfectly motionless. A minute later, Spinister ripped out another snore, and Fulcrum slowly backed away. He ran upstairs as quietly as possible, with his lunch—which was approximately the temperature of _lava_ , that microwave was _weaponized_ —plus an extra box of dry cereal for emergencies, such as if he really didn’t want to go down for dinner later and felt like barricading his door instead.

A posting for a small studio apartment on the other side of town had appeared on Craigslist since the last time he checked. The rent was three times higher. He sent an inquiry.

He’d just about managed to convince himself he was overreacting when a message popped up from Misfire in Discord.

missme> duo?

His status was set to “streming,” which made Fulcrum a little nervous, but it was Friday afternoon—how many people could really be watching? What tiny fraction of those would ever possibly remember him, even if he really screwed up? It was fine. It would be fine. He accepted.

For a few hours, nothing else mattered: it was him, his scatter blaster, and Misfire’s location ping and swearing laughter in his headphones as the two of them raced across an alien red desert planet with giant, fungal scenery and fourteen moons, where even his very worst failures could be fixed by starting another round.

Either the late night had him exhausted enough to sleep through the bus with the wheezing hydraulics or it didn’t run on Saturdays, because Fulcrum was actually sleeping in, for once, when there was a sharp rapping on his door.

He threw an arm over his face to block out the sunlight stabbing in through the frosted window-plastic. “Go away,” he croaked.

Spinister’s irritation was clear even through the door. “You’re the one who wanted the window fixed.”

“I suppose I could climb through from the other side,” said the dryly bemused voice of a _total stranger_. Fulcrum may have shrieked a little. He definitely shot up off the bed and landed with a thump on the floor.

“One second,” he called, about an octave higher than normal, yanking up his pants under yesterday’s shirts and hopping over to the door to yank it open.

Spinister was almost as tall and broad as Grimlock, and approximately a million times more intimidating in all-black cargo pants, boots, and t-shirt than when he was woken up from napping on the couch in pastels demanding blood.

Fulcrum swallowed. “Are you a hitman? You have to tell me if you are. Before you kill me. That’s a rule.”

“That’s not a rule,” Spinister said, frowning. “I get in trouble if I cut people open outside of work, though. You’re thinking of cops.”

Fulcrum’s eyes felt too wide in his face.

The other voice spoke up. “A common misconception. Cops don’t have to tell you anything. As far as I know, hitmen don’t either.” Fulcrum transferred his wide-eyed alarm to the much older stranger in a faded leather jacket and a shirt with a big skull who he hadn’t even noticed standing in Spinister’s shadow. Ranks of square black studs on his shoulders were worn down to silver on the edges, like the flecks of grey in his close black hair. “None of my victims have ever filed a complaint,” he added, teeth flashing sharp.

Every person Fulcrum met in this house was more terrifying that the last. “Ha,” he said, more as an expression of hope than out of any real humor.

Spinister referred to the grizzled shadow as Ravage, implied that he was somehow connected to the landlord, and tromped downstairs, leaving Fulcrum to get murdered, or whatever, since it seemed he wasn’t yet bothered to it himself. Ravage assessed Fulcrum with a flick of his eyes, said nothing in an expressionless way that managed to be extremely judgmental, and carted two double-paned windows and a battered red toolbox into his room as Fulcrum consigned himself to fate and shoved the sparse furniture out of the way. Lacking anything better to do, he found himself kicking his feet on his desk chair, watching Ravage work. The plastic over the window tore out easily, and the broken frames were cut in pieces and dropped out the window to the cracked stoop below. He couldn’t help but notice that the replacements didn’t match either each other or the rest of the house.

Ravage didn’t seem to feel any pressure to fill the silence, but Fulcrum wasn’t as resilient. “So, um, thanks,” he said, “for doing this?” Ravage slid a glance in his direction as he lifted a window into place. “I wasn’t expecting—I mean, I just talked to the landlord yesterday.”

Ravage snorted. “You talked to Frenzy,” he said, like that should mean something. “I just happened to be around.”

“Okay,” Fulcrum said. “Well, I’m looking forward to not freezing any more. So thanks.”

With a little determined hammering, the frame pretty much fit. Fulcrum winced at every blow.

“How did you end up here, anyway,” Ravage said. “You don’t seem like the usual type.”

“Misfire.” At another one of those sideways glances, Fulcrum elaborated. “He told me one of his housemates moved out and I—needed a place.”

“Hmm,” Ravage said. “What’s your name, again?”

“Um.” He couldn’t avoid answering, right? That would be crazy. “Fulcrum?”

“Hmm.”

To fit the next window in, Ravage had to file off some of the wood frame in curling strips, but eventually, they were set together in the still-standing wall. Fulcrum eyed the dingy yellow and institutional mint paint side by side. “That’s a lot better,” he said, and meant it. At least it wasn’t _plastic_.

Ravage hit him with a level stare, not even blinking at Fulcrum’s involuntary twitch. “You strike me as someone who needs permission to do things,” he said, “So. If you’re staying here, here it is: You can do whatever you want to the inside.” When Fulcrum still looked blank, he grudgingly added, “Buzzsaw used to have this room painted black.”

“Wha—really?”

“Black and red. There might still be cans in the cellar.”

Fulcrum looked at the faintly purple walls and mostly-white ceiling, trying to imagine it. “Anything I want?”

“Just don’t touch the outside.”

The—completely dilapidated outside. “The holes were there when I moved in,” he said.

“Don’t do anything to make it look _nicer_ ,” Ravage clarified. “If buildings around here start getting too spruced up, the whole neighborhood will go to hell.”

“Got it,” he said, though he suspected that he actually never would.

When Ravage packed up his toolbox and headed downstairs, Fulcrum trailed behind with some sort of misplaced instinct to show a guest to the door, even though Ravage seemed to know the house better than he did. Most of the others were on the couch in the main room downstairs, probably to escape the banging. All the tiny plastic soldiers had been cleared off the coffee table, and instead there was a teetering stack of wooden blocks. Ravage’s feet made no sound on the creaky steps, but when Fulcrum hit a loose floorboard, Misfire looked over, and his face lit up with a grin. Fulcrum started to smile back. Then Misfire said, “Ravage!” and Fulcrum mentally blocked off the rest of his evening to quietly stew in regret.

“Hey, kid,” Ravage said. “Staying out of trouble?”

“Aw, you know me better than that.” They had a _bit_.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Ravage said, with what sounded like genuine affection.

Krok acknowledged the newcomer much more begrudgingly. “Ravage.”

“Running a tight ship as usual, Krok,” he returned easily. “How’s the thesis?”

“Thanks, bud,” Krok said. “Get fucked.”

Ravage flashed his teeth. “Every night, when your mom is in town.” Spinister raised his hand over the back of the couch for a high-five, and Ravage slapped it indulgently on his way out the side door. Intent on the wooden tower, Grimlock ignored the entire production.

“Traitors,” Krok muttered when he was gone.

Spinister rolled his eyes. “You need to get over it.”

“Yeah, Ravage is great,” Misfire agreed.

“Have you up been to their farm?” Spinister asked him.

Krok scoffed. “The commune, you mean. Have _you_?”

“Soundwave invited me. You know how sometimes I get posted to that farmers’ market in the park? They have a stand. Really good applesauce,” Spinister said. Fulcrum added several notes to his mental yarn boards.

“Oh, I think I ate some of that,” Misfire said. “Is that where it came from?”

Krok regarded them both with outrage. “You can’t just eat our _landlord’s_ applesauce!”

Spinister turned his whole head to squint at him. “Why would that be worse than applesauce from strangers?”

Misfire caught Fulcrum drifting back toward the stairs and waved him over, wiggling closer to Grimlock to make room on the couch. “Fulcrum! Come play Jenga.”

Fulcrum might not have a lot of experience with normal American kid stuff, but he was _pretty sure_ that was a game typically marketed to people younger than twelve. But he didn’t want to look like a loser, so he asked, “As, like. A drinking game?”

“ _Galaxy_ brain,” Misfire whispered, eyes sparkling, and Fulcrum felt—better.

Krok rolled his eyes and checked his watch, making him the first person under fifty that Fulcrum had ever seen with a watch, but he stood up when Spinister and Grimlock shrugged. “I’ll go see if Crankcase needs a break.”


	5. Clearance Rack Snacks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New friends, old enemies, lies uncovered, secrets revealed! Drunk Jenga, and a quest.

Crankcase stumbled downstairs in shorts and layered t-shirts with his hair in a clumpy haystack. He pulled up a chair and sat heavily at the kitchen table, where Misfire was lining up bottles, cans, and a second Brita filter from the back of the fridge, which was evidently vodka. “I need three,” he said, scowling. Krok patted his shoulder once and went back to the couch, where Spinister and Grimlock had the tower of blocks raised to a teetering height.

Misfire paused, his finger on a cap. “Three what?”

“ _ Three _ ,” Crankcase said, “because that’s how many goddamn problem sets I have.”

“Haven’t you only been in class like a week?”

Crankcase put his head down on his arms and groaned. 

“What are you studying,” Fulcrum asked. Misfire was dumping things into a plastic orange pitcher apparently at random, the tip of his tongue sticking out between his teeth.

Whatever Crankcase mumbled was lost in the waffle cotton of his sleeves. “Air-space engineering,” Misfire said. “He loves it. Really. At least, he loves complaining about it.”

Crankcase turned his head enough to say, “Aerospace,” but he didn’t correct anything else.

Misfire picked up the pitcher with both hands and slurped from the side, ignoring Fulcrum’s disbelieving stare. He made a considering noise and set it down. With a narrow-eyed glance toward the couch and another toward Crankcase, who still had his eyes shut, he crept back to the cupboard above the refrigerator and grabbed another bottle, a radioactive green. The first splash was measured out with the judicious consideration of a poisoner. Then he tipped in the rest of it.

“Um,” Fulcrum said.

Misfire straightened with a sunny grin. “I’ll get cups!” He surreptitiously chucked the bottle into the recycling while the banging of other cabinets covered the clink of glass.

It said something about his situation, Fulcrum thought, that he kind of wanted Misfire to take another drink from the pitcher before anyone else tried it.

Showing a remarkable amount of either apathy or trust, Crankcase stuck his hand out, curled, ready to hold any cup placed in it. He peered up at Fulcrum out of the nest of his arms while Misfire made a line of the houses’s bumpy red glasses. “You’re at the university up the hill, right? Nova Point?”

“Yeah. We start next week,” Fulcrum said. “I’m still doing a lot of gen eds.” For some reason, he felt reluctant to admit his major was business management.

“He’s got an astronomy textbook that looks cool,” Misfire said. He started pouring out his concoction in equal measures.

“What about you, Misfire?” 

He froze in place with the pitcher suspended. “Um.” His open face took on a distinctly hunted cast.

“He’s a dropout,” Crankcase said. 

Fulcrum frowned. “What? Since when? Don’t you go to—U. Polyhex-Clemency, you said. We talked about it.”

Misfire grimaced. “So, long story.”

“No it’s not,” Crankcase scoffed.

“ _ Funny _ story,” Misfire corrected.

“Eh.” 

“Anyway,” Misfire said, “I said U. P., but. The P stands for Pretendia.”

“Pretendia,” Fulcrum repeated.

“Yeah. Because—”

“I got it.”

“And it’s funny to say—” 

“U. P.”

“Right.” He giggled a little, nervously, and chewed on his lower lip. “I did a semester and a half, but,” his face screwed up pitifully, “I fucking hated it.”

Fulcrum sat back and tried to sort through his strangely churning emotions. Did he care that Misfire had lied? Not really. It hadn’t been about anything important or terrible. Of course, Fulcrum knew that other people didn’t go to college. Other people didn’t have the means, or didn’t have the interest, or didn’t have their whole lives planned out for them since before they were born. Or so he’d heard. “So, you just—quit,” he said slowly.

“Right.”

“And—play video games for money on Twitch.”

Misfire held up a finger. “I let me people  _ watch _ me for money.”

Crankcase made a face. 

Misfire asked, “Do you hate me?”

“No,” Fulcrum said. “No, I—it is kind of funny. U. P. It’s fine. I just. You didn’t like it, so—you stopped.” Risking judgement and disappointment and screwing up his whole future, derailing everything just because—he didn’t like it. If everyone quit doing things they hated—what would that even look like? Anarchy. Fulcrum couldn’t imagine. Thinking about it made him kind of queasy.

Misfire and Crankcase exchanged a look he couldn’t interpret. “Yeah,” Misfire said. His eyes fell to the cups he’d poured out earlier. “Oh, hey, these are done.” He clapped his hands together and yelled, “Juice!” startling Fulcrum out of his meditation.

The precarious tower of Jenga blocks on the other side of the room fell over with a thunderous clatter.

“Fuck,” Grimlock said. Spinister cackled. 

Misfire winced, handed glasses to Fulcrum and Crankcase, and meekly ferried the other four over to the couch. He rummaged around in the cupboard again and came up with some oddly decorative square shot glasses, which he lined up and started loading while the others rebuilt the tower. 

Fulcrum examined his mystery drink, sniffed it, and, after Crankcase chugged half a glass, cautiously took a sip. Improbably, it wasn’t terrible. Crankcase cut the remainder of his own with straight vodka.

They arrayed themselves around the Jenga table, mostly on the battered sectional, but Misfire and Fulcrum had loose cushions on the floor that looked like they’d come from another, unrelated couch. 

“Okay,” Fulcrum said. “How is this going to work?”

“Ground rules,” Spinister said, nodding seriously.

“Take a block, take a shot?” Misfire submitted.

“Absolutely not,” Krok said. “Take a block, take a sip. If you  _ drop _ a block, take a shot, and interference is a shot penalty too. Drop the tower, finish your cup.”

Crankcase eyed the tower speculatively. “Drop it before the second round and you’re cut off,” Grimlock growled.

Krok nodded decisively. “The last tower fell on Grimlock’s turn, so he goes first. We’ll go clockwise.” Satisfied, he sat back into the saggy embrace of the couch. He took a sip from his cup.

His head swiveled to Misfire. 

“Misfire,” he said evenly.

Misfire clutched his glass close to his chest. “There wasn’t much left?”

“What?” Crankcase looked into his glass. “Is this what strychnine tastes like?” He took another sip.

“No, strychnine is bitter,” Spinister said. “Not GHB either.” Fulcrum did  _ not _ ask.

“That was  _ Nickel’s _ Midori,” Krok said.

“Hmm,” Spinister said.

“Oh, god,” Crankcase moaned, “You’ve killed us  _ slowly _ .” 

“Look, if we all drink it, none of us can get in that much trouble,” Misfire said, a little desperately. 

Grimlock finished carefully extracting a block from a side near the base. He snapped it at Misfire, bouncing it off his arm.

“Ow!”

“That’s a shot,” Spinister noted. Fulcrum scooped up the loose piece and handed it back to Grimlock to add to the top of the tower. The impression he was starting to build of Nickel was more than a little alarming—so far, in his imagination, she breathed fire, spat acid, and probably decorated her room, mere steps from his, with severed heads—but Misfire was starting to look a little wounded. 

“I think it’s good,” Fulcrum offered. 

Misfire’s smile was almost shy. “Really?”

“Can’t we just buy her another bottle?” Fulcrum asked. “She won’t be mad if there’s more than she had left, right?”

“Oh, we will,” Krok said ominously. 

Spinister laughed. “Left, right.” 

Grimlock poked Crankcase in the shoulder as he got up for his penalty shot. “Your turn.” 

It was weird, Fulcrum thought, an hour later, when everything was fuzzy. It was weird how it wasn’t weirder. It was weird how weird it wasn’t.

_ Weird _ was a weird word.

Fulcrum was on his second glass of Misfire’s Mystery Juice after accidentally bumping the table while finagling a block and sending the top half of the tower crashing down, but it was okay, nobody was mad, everybody cheered when he finished his drink for knocking it over, they all helped pick up and rebuild it, and the arm of Misfire’s gross hoodie was  _ really _ soft. 

“I know, buddy,” Misfire said, awkwardly patting him on the leg. “You keep saying that.” He didn’t shove Fulcrum away, though, which was nice. A big hand pried open his fingers and took his drink. Grimlock. Grimlock was so  _ big _ . The shoulder under him twitched at someone’s laughter.

“Hoo, boy,” he heard from the couch. 

“Hey, I could really go for a Slurpee,” Misfire said, suddenly very loud. “Does anybody else want a Slurpee? Let’s go get Slurpees.”

“Okay.” Fulcrum frowned. “Your last plan was bad, though. We died.”

“What? How—oh.  _ Not _ true! It was perfect, it went perfectly, and we died to  _ N7 _ , which doesn’t even count.”

“We should make sure he stays awake,” someone else said. Spinister. Spininininster. Who was maybe a vampire. That would explain… some things.

“He’d have to tell us if he was a vampire,” Crankcase mumbled.

Fulcrum orienteered a finger in his direction. “ _ Not _ true,” he said emphatically. “I learned that today.” Or maybe he was thinking of something else.

“Spin, can you take drunkatron here for a second? I’ll—” Fulcrum stopped listening while he laughed.  _ Drunk _ atron. Crankcase  _ was _ drunk. Something soft and dark green hit him in the face. “Put that on,” Krok said. It was a thick sweater. Kind of musty, Fulcrum noticed as he burrowed into it, with blooming holes eaten into the ends of the sleeves, which flopped over his hands. He wiggled his fingers through them. Misfire made a sound like he might have been in pain, and Fulcrum looked up in concern, blinking through his blurry glasses. 

“What’s a slurpy,” he said. 

There was a moment of silence. “That’s just sad,” Grimlock mused. Fulcrum looked around to see what he was talking about.

“Put the puppy eyes away, Misfire. Get him up, we’re going.”

“Wait, wait,” Fulcrum protested, as he realized the Jenga game was being abandoned. “I can keep drinking,” he said. “I was in a  _ frat _ .”

“Yeah, and how’d that turn out for you,” Misfire said, humoring him, as he hauled Fulcrum to his feet. 

Wavering where he stood, Fulcrum hunched a little. The frat had turned out really, really bad. It was almost  _ amazing _ how bad it had gotten. He laughed again, but it was an uglier sound, strangled in his tightening chest. His eyes were hot and prickling. When he scrubbed at them, his nose was numb.

There was another one of those loud silences. Were they waiting for him? “Ha,” Fulcrum said, just in case. 

“Later,” Krok said quietly, which made no sense, and then, louder, “We’ve got a mission. Slurpees.”

The crisp, open air and deep black sky shocked Fulcrum with a little clarity as his lungs burned with cold, but Crankcase seemed immune. He yelled something about being a ninja, jumped off the stoop, and sprinted off with Misfire beside him making jet noises, both their arms stuck straight out behind them. The constellation Orion was posing brightly overhead, circling trapped Polaris with Procyon and Gemini and Sky Lynx. Crankcase and Misfire’s voices floated up to the rest of them from the bottom of the hill. 

“It’s not a  _ ninja _ run if you pretend to be an  _ airplane _ .”

“I’m a ninja plane!”

The nearest 7-11 was near the back side of the lower quad, which was a little concerning, but Fulcrum snuggled into the floppy green hoodie and stuck between Spinister and Grimlock, who were very easy to hide behind, while Krok and Misfire had a whispered conversation that may have been an argument about somebody being an idiot. 

The lights in the convenience store were like a searing blue sun after the soft-edged sodium of the streetlights. There was a cashier who seemed familiar, with straight, shiny black hair and chunky red clumsily-knit fingerless gloves. She looked up briefly from her book of poetry when the six of them burst in, but seemed equally apathetic to Spinister and Misfire shouting across the store and Fulcrum’s tight, apologetic smile. 

Slurpees turned out to be deeply weird oddities of science, semi-frozen  _ and _ carbonated in a rainbow of unnatural flavors. The mango-based one he ended up with was pretty reasonable. Misfire’s carefully layered combination of rendered Sour Patch flavors leavened with Mountain Dew was a blasphemous work of art. Crankcase filled a cup as big as his head with a lethal mix of grape and coke, which seemed worse. 

“You’re going to regret that,” Krok predicted.

“I’m hydrating,” Crankcase said snottily. 

Misfire had started chatting with—at—the cashier, and he dragged Fulcrum to the counter when he wandered too close. “This is Fulcrum,” he said proudly. “He’s with us.”

“Is that right,” the cashier said, adeptly conveying the impression that she would have had the exact same response to literally anything Misfire said.

Fulcrum kept his chin up. “Yes?” It was certainly true in the literal sense; he lived in the same house, and arrived there with the rest of them, and—they might even be friends. Well, the rest of them were friends with each other, definitely. They might be friends with Fulcrum. He might be friends with them. He snuck a glance at Misfire. “Yes,” he said, more certainly.

“Congratulations,” the cashier said in the same flat tone. “Are you done?”

Definitely familiar. 

She rang them up with a discount, though, and Misfire said, “Thanks, Dead End,” as they left.

It was even colder outside, because they were drinking  _ ice _ in the middle of  _ winter _ , but Fulcrum couldn’t regret it, or the two bags of candy and junk food they’d piled up in addition to their liquid sugar.

The dubious mix of dyes and alcohol sloshing around in his stomach turned over and threatened to rebel when he saw a scrupulously polished, hulking purple Hummer parked along the street. License plate: PEACE. He didn’t know whether it had arrived while they were inside, or if it had been there the whole time and he just hadn’t noticed it, however unlikely that seemed. He didn’t know which option was worse.

Crankcase scoffed when he saw it. “I hate that car,” Crankcase said. “It belongs to this guy—I cross-registered for a poetry class freshman year, and he was in it.  _ Such _ a douchebag. Every time I see it, I just want to--eugh.” His free hand clenched furiously in the direction of the Hummer, like with enough effort, he could crush it with his mind.

“I know him,” Fulcrum said, voice low. “He’s the president of the Interfraternity Council.”

Crankcase turned toward him, and he flinched a little, even though he knew Crankcase wasn’t scowling  _ at _ him. Crankcase looked back at the Hummer. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, you know what?” After a fuming pause, he settled on an emphatic, “ _ Fuck _ that guy.” He spun on his heel and marched back into 7-11.

Crankcase re-emerged with two boxes of eggs and pushed one into Fulcrum’s chest until his instinct overrode his confusion and he grabbed it. 

“Did you want to make eggs?” Fulcrum asked, peering down at the carton.

“I’ll tell you what I want,” Crankcase said. “No. I’ll  _ show _ you.” A little unsteady still, he flipped open the carton, selected an egg, and hefted it. 

“Wait,” Fulcrum said.

“Oh, no,” Krok said.

“Oh,  _ yes _ ,” Misfire breathed. 

The egg sailed in a perfect, lovely arc through the air, across the street, and broke open with a splat across Tarn’s gleaming windshield. 

“Nice,” Spinister approved. “Are we doing all these cars?”

“Just the Hummer,” Crankcase said, right as Misfire chucked one with more glee than grace and it came down on a grey sedan. “Or, whatever.”

“Let’s make this quick,” Krok said. He grabbed two eggs for Grimlock, and lobbed another one underhanded to shatter on the roof.

Fulcrum distantly noted that Misfire had broken open the box in his hands, but he was focused on the shining smear of shells and yolk and goo that was dripping languidly down the driver’s side door. 

They were all laughing; Crankcase manically, Spinister in a high, wheezing giggle, Krok incredulously, maybe mostly at Spinister.

Fulcrum felt dizzy. 

Someone put his Slurpee on the ground, and Misfire was pressing an egg into his numb hand, fragile shell rough and strangely weighty. “Come on,” he said. “What have you got to lose?”

“Nothing,” Fulcrum said. “The frat still has all my stuff.” A feeling was bubbling up inside him. It wasn’t the Slurpee. It was wild and reckless and—maybe, he thought. Maybe he could. 

“Take something back,” Misfire said. His hand was warming around Fulcrum’s fingers, cradling the fragile egg between them. “You want to?”

“You know what?” Fulcrum said. “I really, really do.”

The first one he threw hit a tree. But the second! The second landed perfectly in the seam between the Hummer’s doors and exploded in a firework of goop and shards. It seemed to happen in slow motion, every frame captured in beautiful detail. He rocked forward when somebody slapped him on the back, but he didn’t drop the carton. He threw another egg, and another, until it was empty, and then he threw the cardboard too. It, predictably, bounced harmlessly off the pavement a few feet away, but Fulcrum still felt better. 

Then Crankcase chucked his grape-cola Slurpee. It hit the hood and crumpled, hissing out slush in a lurid black splatter. In the moment of silence as everyone stared, the  _ drip-drip _ was audible across the quiet street. A block away, a door slammed.

“We should get out of here,” Grimlock said.

“Yep.”

“For sure.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Let’s—”

“Ninja run!” Crankcase yelled.

Fulcrum scooped up his Slurpee with one hand, but he threw the other out behind him and leaned forward and ran for a block and a half under the shining stars with his oversized hoodie flapping around him, tripping and stumbling and never quite falling, Misfire to his left, cackling breathlessly.

His cheeks hurt, and he realized he was grinning. The rest of the trip back to the house was a giddy blur of laughing and jostling each other and brainfreeze. Grimlock split off a block from the house to turn down a side street

“S2B2 later. If you’re around,” he said, arching imposing eyebrows at Misfire. 

“Yeah, of course, what do you mean— _ oh _ , okay, yes, sure,  _ bye _ ,” Misfire said, cheeks tinged pink in the cold. The fizzy feeling spread to Fulcrum’s fingertips. 

The rest of them piled through the slightly crooked door to the house and swept into a flurry of throwing off coats and banging around the kitchen, and then Misfire and Fulcrum were standing in the middle of the living room as the house warmed up around them. The walls creaked in a gust of wind outside. Misfire was standing so close, watching him with bright eyes and a smile still teasing his mouth. “What now?” he asked, and for the first time in his life, Fulcrum felt like the answers to that question might be limitless. He could drop the classes he was already dreading. He could go back outside and run laps around the house, screaming. He looked at Misfire’s sparkling eyes and bitten-red lips and thought—he could try anything. Anything he wanted. There might be consequences, but ultimately, they probably wouldn’t be so bad. They probably wouldn’t be worse than living his whole life without ever finding out. 

“I want to paint the ceiling of my room black,” Fulcrum said, testing out the shape of an impulse. “and—draw on constellations. Stars. That glow in the dark.”

“You  _ nerd _ ,” Misfire said, but with more delight than mockery. The sharp edges of his wide grin were soft in the warm light. He inched closer. “Yeah, we can do that. We can definitely do that. That sounds awesome.”

Fulcrum smiled back shyly. A little bubble of glowing warmth was rising inside him, like the slow furling swash of a lava lamp. He looked at Misfire and could almost imagine the days stretching out ahead of them: crowding around the kitchen table for dinner, playing Jenga with the others, watching weird YouTube shows about finding great stuff in the trash, shooting their way across spaceships and alien worlds. Misfire bothering him at his desk while he tries to do homework, or maybe sitting in Misfire’s room, asking about the stickers on the wall, turning around to find him leaning in close—

“This is so cute, I think I’m going to barf,” Crankcase said. Fulcrum startled. 

“That’s unrelated,” Spinister assured him. “Probably.” He, Krok, and Crankcase were lined up on the other side of the table, watching openly. He tossed back a handful of popcorn, then angled the bag toward Krok.

“Hey, Fulcrum. Let’s—go upstairs,” Misfire said. “And talk about—painting?” Krok snorted and took some popcorn.

Fulcrum glanced back at the others as Misfire led him out by the elbow. “Is Crankcase going to be okay?”

“Don’t worry,” Misfire said, “Spinister’s a paramedic. He un-dislocated my shoulder and gave Krok two stitches, after Nutters.”

Fulcrum stopped with one foot on the stairs. “A paramedic,” he repeated. “A  _ paramedic _ .” His hand went to his forehead. “That—what—seriously?” he said, “Are you—I thought he was—” He started to laugh. “Nutters? Nutters, the  _ squirrel _ ?”

“Long story,” Misfire said sheepishly. “Actually, you can probably guess. I jumped off Crankcase’s desk trying to catch a squirrel that got in from outside, and it scratched up Krok’s arm.”

Fulcrum reached out to find Misfire’s hand and laced their fingers together. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said fondly. “I can’t believe I have to live here.”

Misfire looked up from their entangled hands, nervously chewing his lip. “Well. I should probably tell you—you don’t have to. TC’s house has a room free too.”

Fulcrum thought that he should probably be mad, but there wasn’t room for it inside him, everything else pushed out by the bright, expanding bubble of happiness.

“No, too late,” he said. “I’m staying.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THUS CONCLUDES what I think of as what would be the first three-episode arc if this were a TV show. A Decepti-sitcom. Premise: established. I have many (many) more ideas for the Scavs and other characters (Dead End is on a roller derby team!) and the older Decepticons and Soundwave and Cosmos which will hopefully get written and put in the series tag at some point. If you are interested, come talk about it [on tumblr](https://decepticon-propaganda.tumblr.com)!


End file.
